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War Diary

Jean had to wait until her Uncle Bill died to read his World War II diary. In 1941 Bill had joined the paratroops and until ten years before his death at eighty, crowed that he still fit into his uniform. A lifelong bachelor, several times a year he packed a suitcase and a cooler of beer and drove across the country to look up army buddies.

Merle Drown is the author of stories, essays, plays, reviews, and two novels, Plowing Up A Snake (The Dial Press) and The Suburbs Of Heaven (Soho Press, 2000), trade paperback (Berkley Press, 2001). He edited Meteor in the Madhouse, the posthumous novellas of Leon Forrest, published by Northwestern University Press in 2001. Barnes and Noble chose The Suburbs of Heaven for its Discover Great New Writers series. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the NH Arts Council. He teaches in Southern N.H.U.’s MFA program. “War Diary” is from his collection-in-progress, Shrunken Heads, miniature portraits of the famous among us, or Balzac in a nutshell. Pieces have appeared in Amoskeag, Meetinghouse, Night Train and 971 Menu. E-mail: merle[at]drown.com